Go Pro Hero 6

indiawilds

indiawilds

Veteran
Go Pro Hero 6 Black announced.

4K 60p, 2.7k @120fps, 1080p @240fps. GP 1 processor speed double than Hero5.
Better image stabilisation (digital).
water proof to 33 feet
Ultra wide angle glass lens
12MP raw still images.
30 photos in single burst
Wide dynamic range.

B&H: price is 499 US dollars.

With Karma drone it is 1199 us dollars. What do you guys think about Hero6? Will you be buying?
 
That looks interesting indeed.
Wonder what the battery life is in 4K and if it overheats like the Sony action cam does?
 
I really wish that GoPro would make a Pro version that has lens mount & SDI, even if SDI is a backpack accessory. I know 3rd parties have taken GoPro bodies & then modded them, but why not GoPro actually make a "Pro" version?

I don't know what the workflow is for the people who shoot James Cordon's "Carpool" series (or similar type shows), but I could really see an editor being happy to use 4x GoPro w/ a SDI cables into an Convergent Design Apollo that records 4 ISO camera feeds in sync in ProRes. Pop the drive & start editing.
 
I have a pile of 4s and accessories, didn't buy into the 5. This one has the 4K 60p that we all want but overall, I feel this will do little to decrease Go Pros alarming free fall as a corporation. $500.00 is almost pricing themselves out of the prosumer/consumer market and the lower end Go Pro offerings are meh. Go Pro needs some real innovation and this isn't it. Will not stop the Chinese hordes from taking most of their market share.
 
any official specs or word on what the "improved DR" and "improved low light" actually are? These are the two areas I am most interested in, but don't see these details quantified anywhere.

Otherwise looks nice, but more of a "GoPro 5s". 4K 60p is a great and welcome addition for GoPro though - I found 60p is pretty essential with these cameras for many uses, and 4K is really ideal on a GoPro for some cropping and re-framing. So that is a big sell for more pro-level work.

The enhanced EIS is something I am super skeptical about... still haven't seen any implementations I really like. I do agree with PureDrifting that there could be something more revolutionary here. You know what would have been cool? If they basically built in the functionality from SteadXP, and allowed their software to apply gyro-based EIS non-destructively, either during shooting or after the fact, which could be toggled on and off, read from the onboard gyro data. WHOA. That would be a big sell. And/or, if they were able to include some form of OIS similar to what Apple has been doing on iPhone.

Without this, it's a noteworthy but ultimately minor bump, and SHOOT, the price has really escalated upwards in the past years. $500 is steep given competition.

But at the end of the day, all I want to know is DR and lowlight improvements, but can't find numbers or details for this :/
 
I've been done with GoPro's for a while now. I still have a Pelican case full of them and cages and mounting accessories, but whenever anyone asks or says they want a GoPro, I tell them I don't have any anymore. They were cool in 2012, but I'm just tired of that "GoPro look".
 
Does anyone know the bit rate of the GoPro Hero 6 at 4K in fps 60/30/24??? On the Hero 5 it was 50 Mbps if I'm not mistaken.
Didn't see any Hero 6 specs posted on GoPro's web site regarding bit rates at different fps and resolutions.
 
According to this page at B&H the maximum recording bitrate GoPro Hero 6 is 60 Mbps or 78 Mbps (in Protune):
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/new-go-pro-hero-6

The maximum bitrate for the Hero 5 was 60 Mbps when recording 4K (all frame rates), 2.7K (> 30fps), 1080p (> 60fps). For lower resolutions and frame rates, the Hero 5 usually recorded at either 45 Mbps or 30 Mbps.

The GoPro Hero 6 is capable of recording in both H.264 and H.265 (which is roughly twice as efficient as H.264). But initial reports are that H.265 is only used for the new higher frame rate recording modes (4K @ 60fps, 1080p @ 240fps, 2.7K @ 120fps) and H.264 encoding is used for other recording modes:
https://community.gopro.com/t5/Cameras/GoPro-Hero-6-Black-First-Impressions/td-p/64662
 
James Carpenter said:
Is there a comparable camera (image quality wise) for a cheaper price?
Click to expand...

Not sure if they are a lot cheaper but Yi ha been shipping a 4K 60p action cam for a quite a while and there are Sony competitors that actually have a better picture. There are also a bunch of Chinese no name action cameras that best Go Pro's overall specs but few are buying them yet. But give it 6 months or a year, the Chinese have a tendency to make leaps and bounds quality and feature improvements and they are gunning to take Go Pro's market share.
 
puredrifting said:
Not sure if they are a lot cheaper but Yi ha been shipping a 4K 60p action cam for a quite a while and there are Sony competitors that actually have a better picture. There are also a bunch of Chinese no name action cameras that best Go Pro's overall specs but few are buying them yet. But give it 6 months or a year, the Chinese have a tendency to make leaps and bounds quality and feature improvements and they are gunning to take Go Pro's market share.
Click to expand...

Just discovered the Yi, seems comparable image quality wise, same EIS, cheaper price!
As for the Sony, the price and form factor are big sticking points for me, but the IS and image are great.

I've been wanting to get something for ages now, thinking the Yi 4k+ is my best bet.
 
puredrifting said:
Not sure if they are a lot cheaper but Yi ha been shipping a 4K 60p action cam for a quite a while and there are Sony competitors that actually have a better picture. There are also a bunch of Chinese no name action cameras that best Go Pro's overall specs but few are buying them yet. But give it 6 months or a year, the Chinese have a tendency to make leaps and bounds quality and feature improvements and they are gunning to take Go Pro's market share.
Click to expand...

Well, it makes it a lot easier when you start with someone else's work and go from there...
 
“Well, it makes it a lot easier when you start with someone else's work and go from there...”

It’s been that way since opposable thumbs hit the scene !!
 
I bought mine yesterday from a Best Buy about before the actual launch....should have done one of those open box videos...lol.

I also own a Yi 4K +, which came out with the whole 4K 60P thing first. The Yi does not offer Waterproof without a case, like the GoPro 5 and 6 but I find the interface FAR easier to use and interact with on the Yi.

Image Quality seems to be equal between cameras, though the Yi seems sharper

The Yi also offers different bit rates for 4k 60P

Yi is significantly cheaper

GoPro has way more accesories from the company itslef as well as from third party vendors.

Both have good apps, alhtough I find the Yi's more efficient and less annoying.

As it turns out, I experienced significant problems with the 4K60P files form the GoPro 6. My NLE's couldn't load it. I had a trial version of Vegas 15 which could open the GoPro 4K 60P files. Might have been a problem with the unit I had. I think the Codec is optimized for use with their editing programs, which is not something I am interested in working with. The Yi files work great on all my NLE's. I ended up returning my GoPro 6 today and purchased another Yi 4K +.
 
True North said:
The Yi also offers different bit rates for 4k 60P
As it turns out, I experienced significant problems with the 4K60P files form the GoPro 6. My NLE's couldn't load it. I had a trial version of Vegas 15 which could open the GoPro 4K 60P files. Might have been a problem with the unit I had. I think the Codec is optimized for use with their editing programs, which is not something I am interested in working with. The Yi files work great on all my NLE's. I ended up returning my GoPro 6 today and purchased another Yi 4K +.
Click to expand...

The GoPro Hero 6 records 4K 60p using the H.265 (HEVC) codec up to a maximum bitrate of 78 Mbps. The Yi 4K+ records everything using H.264 up to a maximum bitrate 135 Mbps.

The H.265 codec is about twice as efficient as H.264 which explains why the bitrates would be higher on the Yi 4K+. A bitrate of about 78 Mbps H.265 is roughly equivalent to a bitrate of 156 Mbps in H.264 which means that the video encoding quality of the 4K 60P on the Go Pro Hero 6 has the potential to be better than on the Yi 4K+ even though the bitrate is lower (ultimately though a variety of factors affect the image quality though, not just the video encoder). Plus, with a more efficient codec you can fit a lot more video on an SD card before running out of space, while still retaining the same (or better) video quality.

H.265 does have some downsides, in that it's much more computationally expensive to decode, which makes it a little less edit friendly and means that direct playback of high resolution, high frame rate video (like 4K 60p) can be choppy unless the playback device has hardware accelerated support for H.265 decoding. I think most modern NLEs should be able to ingest H.265 video though, so it would be interesting to know which editor had trouble with these files.
 
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True North said:
I bought mine yesterday from a Best Buy about before the actual launch....should have done one of those open box videos...lol.

I also own a Yi 4K +, which came out with the whole 4K 60P thing first. The Yi does not offer Waterproof without a case, like the GoPro 5 and 6 but I find the interface FAR easier to use and interact with on the Yi.

Image Quality seems to be equal between cameras, though the Yi seems sharper

The Yi also offers different bit rates for 4k 60P

Yi is significantly cheaper

GoPro has way more accesories from the company itslef as well as from third party vendors.

Both have good apps, alhtough I find the Yi's more efficient and less annoying.

As it turns out, I experienced significant problems with the 4K60P files form the GoPro 6. My NLE's couldn't load it. I had a trial version of Vegas 15 which could open the GoPro 4K 60P files. Might have been a problem with the unit I had. I think the Codec is optimized for use with their editing programs, which is not something I am interested in working with. The Yi files work great on all my NLE's. I ended up returning my GoPro 6 today and purchased another Yi 4K +.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the user experience, very interesting. I predict Go Pro will continue their downward slide, too expensive and not that innovative.
 
I didn't know the GoPro 6 was recording in H.265

It's still a pain in the ass to manage from an editing standpoint
 
How are the lenses on the Hero 6 and the Yi 4k? Has the perma-fisheye look been improved? I know you can pick different FOVs, but wide would be nice without so much distortion.
 
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